Bill Virdon, Quiet Manager of Four M.L.B. Teams, Dies at 90

Bill Virdon was one of the major leagues’ smoothest-fielding center fielders of the 1950s and early ’60s. He managed four teams, winning division championships with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Houston Astros and bringing a surprising Yankee team to the brink of one. But many remember him most for hitting a seemingly routine ground ball that was anything but: It sent the Pirates on their way to a dramatic Game 7 victory over the Yankees in the 1960 World Series.

Often described as “bespectacled,” given the relative rarity of ballplayers with eyeglasses, Virdon, who died at 90 on Tuesday, was the National League’s rookie of the year with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1955 but spent almost his entire career with the Pirates, playing alongside the future Hall of Fame right fielder Roberto Clemente.

The Pirates announced Virdon’s death, in Springfield, Mo.

Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run gave the Pirates the 1960 World Series championship. But Virdon played an important role in that decisive game, at Forbes Field, as the beneficiary of a bad hop. The Pirates were trailing by three runs in the eighth inning with a runner on first and nobody out when Virdon, a left-handed batter, hit a ground ball to shortstop Tony Kubek off the lefty Bobby Shantz.

“Shantz was tough on lefty hitters, and he was tough on me, so I didn’t like facing him,” Virdon told Victor Debs Jr. for the oral history “This Was Part of Baseball Then” (2002). “But he hung a curveball, and I hit it hard, but it was right at Kubek. I said to myself, ‘Uh-oh, perfect double-play ball.’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/sports/baseball/bill-virdon-dead.html